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The Short-Lived Glory Days of Nude Psychotherapy

In 1967, psychologist Paul Bindrim introduced the world to the salubrious properties of naked psychotherapy. Despite the treatment’s somewhat lurid connotations and relative obscurity nowadays, nude psychotherapy did garner its share of press attention, professional consideration, and happy, naked adherents.

Bindrim’s theories were inspired by the famed psychologist Abraham Maslow (you know, the fellow with the hierarchy of needs) and focused on the acceptance of the naked body as a whole. This message wasn’t particularly unorthodox even if his methodology was. Historian Ian Nicholson describes Bindrim’s birthday suit treatments in his eminently readable paper “Baring the soul: Paul Bindrim, Abraham Maslow and ‘Nude psychotherapy”